on the morning of January 1st 2019 a woman found her boyfriend unresponsive lying in the bathtub EMTs were called and attempted resuscitation but were unsuccessful the two had stayed up for New Year's Eve the previous night and according to the girlfriend he showed no signs of illness or change in Behavior prior to going to bed no signs of injury were found overdose was ruled out as the toxicology report found no presence of Narcotics in his blood however anabolic steroids specifically stanol nandrolone and testosterone were found as well as a small amount of alcohol it wasn't
until the autopsy that things became clear the male was approximately 5'8 and weighed 187 lb his body had significant skeletal musculature with low subcutaneous fat and no signs of injury internal examination revealed his organs were congested due to impaired blood flow his heart was significantly enlarged tissue scarring was found in the heart at the posterior wall indicating damage to the heart muscle what you see here are sections of the coronary artery which supplies blood to the heart this yellowish white region of the artery is plaque buildup despite his age and physicality he had severe atherosclerosis
an enlarged microscopic image of the artery showed it had about 75% blockage this degree of blockage would be found in an older person who had a long-term diet high in saturated fat and processed foods for several decades instead it was found in a 24-year-old bodybuilder who was abusing steroids both his girlfriend and colleagues confirmed he had been taking androgenic anabo steroids for bodybuilding his regimen consisted of intramuscular injections of stanol testosterone tamoxifen molone and nandrolone he had no family history of early atherosclerosis or cardiac events the coroner officially ruled the 24-year-old had succumbed to Cardiac
Arrest due to an enlarged heart from abuse of steroids cardiac issues from steroid abuse are becoming an all too familiar occurrence especially in weightlifting and bodybuilding circles since 2010 there have been 25 cardiac related deaths among professional bodybuilders with an average age of 35 years compared to other professional sports bodybuilding has the highest incidence of sudden cardiac death followed by soccer at 177 basketball at 6 football at 4 and swimming cycling Hockey baseball and MMA all at one steroid abuse is common among professional and amateur bodybuilders and consequently can result in fatal heart complications to
better understand how steroids affect the heart you first have to know how hormones work after all steroids act very similar to hormones in the body one of the roles of hormones is to allow the brain to control bodily functions to contract your muscles your brain uses an electrical signal that travels through nerves when this signal reaches your skeletal muscles they contract the nervous system cannot control specific organ behaviors for example the nervous system cannot tell muscles to grow it can only tell it to contract or relax this is where hormones come in hormones can be
thought of as Wi-Fi there's no hardwire connection like the nervous system yet the brain can still get the message across testosterone is a hormone that increases muscle growth among other functions the brain signals the testes to release testosterone into the bloodstream testosterone travels in the blood until it binds to Androgen receptors on skeletal muscle cells once bound to these receptors a mechanism is initiated that causes the muscle cell to increase production of actin and myosin proteins actin and myosin proteins form filament structures which make up my fibral that form muscle fibers which make up muscle
the more testosterone that's released the more actin and Milestone that's produced leading to more muscle it's because of this process that testosterone is tightly controlled so muscle growth does not become excessive also other bodily processes require protein so not all protein production can be dedicated to muscle growth you can get around this natural limit of testosterone by injecting certain hormones into your bloodstream that bind to Androgen receptors one class of steroids people use to do this are anabolic androgen ENC steroids or AAS these steroids specifically bind to Androgen receptors on muscle cells causing the same
mechanism that testosterone initiates by consistently taking these steroids skeletal muscle cells are over signal to produce excess protein causing more muscle growth on the surface it's great you inject steroids work out eat more protein and your muscles just keep growing but unfortunately this is too good to be true one thing people don't realize is your heart muscle likees skeletal muscle has Androgen receptors too as your other muscles grow in size so does your heart stronger heart muscles are beneficial to a point because your heart can PT more blood and has more endurance but it's not
long till this starts to become a problem when the heart becomes too large it's known as cardiio megal the weight of a normal heart for a man is between 280 and 350 gam with any weight over 450 G being diagnosed as cardiomegaly in some cases of steroid abuse heart Mass has increased to 580 G A 65% increase over Normal Heart weight cardom megali has a negative effect on cardiac performance and can be fatal to explain how cardio megali is bad let's look at how your heart works the heart has chambers that fill with blood muscles
in the chamber walls contract to pump blood out of the chamber the more active you are the bigger and stronger the muscles become if the muscles grow too big such as from steroid abuse they become inefficient as they're too thick to fully contract blood begins to pull in the ventricles known as congestive heart failure you would never know these issues exist on the outside but on the inside it becomes clear what better way to see what really happens inside the body then through an autopsy autopsies performed on athletes who succumb to sudden cardiac events were
reviewed by several science journals in this section of the video I'll review some of those findings to see what really happens inside the body in 2020 the science journal medicina conducted a systematic review of 27 autopsies of athletes who had sudden cardiac death the average age of the subjects was 29 years 94% were male and 6% were female the subjects participated in different athletic activities ranging from cycling Marathon running bodybuilding and weightlifting but the most common activity was bodybuilding 33% of the athletes had cardio megali 30% had large left ventricles 79% had fibrotic scars on
heart tissue indicating acute heart injury and 52% had necrotic myocardial tissue necrotic heart tissue is tissue that has died from lack of blood supply to the tissue itself and is often found in someone with a prolonged heart attack not 29-year-old athletes due to cardiovascular issues it's likely that the heart had a deficit in performance and oxygen delivery not surprisingly this hypothesis is quite true the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and sports found that athletes taking androgenic anabolic steroids had significantly higher hemoglobin in their blood than non-users higher hemoglobin levels means your body is not getting enough
oxygen due to an underlying issue hemoglobin is a protein found in your red blood cells it's responsible for capturing oxygen when blood passes through your lungs and then releases it into your tissue to compensate for low oxygen your body makes more hemoglobin to increase the amount that's captured this is due to the fact that the heart is not pumping blood efficiently and therefore delivering less oxygen to tissue what's interesting is high hemoglobin is often found in smokers as their pulmonary system is less efficient at taking in oxygen the reverse is true for a fit athlete
a physically fit athlete typically has less hemoglobin than normal because their Cardiac and Pulmonary systems are incredibly efficient it's unusual that Physically Active bodybuilders have elevated hemoglobin pointing to under L issues what about the excessive plaque buildup as seen from the autopsy of the 24-year-old is it related to his abuse of steroids or was it from genetics or even lifestyle it should be no surprise that like any drug you put in your body there's going to be side effects some commonly known side effects of steroids are increased acne atrophy of the testes lower levels of
natural testosterone and mood swings one side effect you may not know is how your cholesterol is affected some Studies have found that anabolic androgenic steroids increase LDL cholesterol or bad cholesterol and decrease HDL or good cholesterol The Archives of internal medicine found via systematic review that androgenic steroids reduced good cholesterol by 52% and rais bad cholesterol by 36% the increase in bad cholesterol is not fully understood yet the decrease in good cholesterol is more clear there is an enzyme in the body called hepatic triglyceride lipase or htl which breaks down good cholesterol by increasing the
amount of testosterone in the body the activity of the htl enzyme is increased thereby decreasing the amount of HDL cholesterol in the body you may be asking yourself if there's all this data showing how bad steroid abuse is why don't more people know about it there's a couple of reasons first is sample size on social media it may seem like a lot of people are taking steroids yet this is a biased perspective in a wider shot chronic steroid abuse is much smaller than you think for social issues smaller group sizes result in less attention and
therefore change in the 1960s about 50% of adults smoke cigarettes when the Surgeon General came out with the landmark study in 1964 linking tobacco use to cancer many people were affected and hence change was quick and noticeable by contrast the number of American adults who abuse steroids is about 2.8% a tiny segment of the population this tiny segment also makes for small sample sizes in research therefore limiting the number of studies that can be published finally full disclosure this is my opinion so take it as you will a lot of steroid abuse is both glorified
and ignored on social media specifically by Fitness influencers in the current age of social media getting lots of attention isn't Just A Rush of dopamine those views translate the people whom you can sell your customade fitness program to or attract lucrative sponsorships I fir believe social media and fitness influencers have caused a rise in steroid abuse and it will continue to grow into an epidemic whether its pressures of competition obsession with achieving strength goals or the hyperrealism of social media people are being influenced to use steroids after all why not partake it worked out for
them the fitness influencer industry shows no signs of slowing down in platforms like Tik Tok Instagram and YouTube If people especially young people are not made aware that the dangers of steroid abuse they will find out but through tragedy thank you for watching Dark science [Music]
